All In A Day's Work
by Tygerwulfe
Summary: Set in the AU created by my fic Test Subject. Spike's trying to work, and keeps being... interrupted. Who knew computers could be so confusing! Just a silly little ficlet. Review, please!


Disclaimer: Not mine. Not a one.  
  
Summary: Set in the AU created by my fic Test Subject. Spike's trying to work, and keeps being... interrupted. Who knew computers could be so confusing?!  
  
Author's Notes: Just a slightly weird ficlet that came to me at 1:18 this morning.... Why I'm suddenly writing in the first person again, I don't know. And yes, I KNOW I should be working on OOT and the end of TTACAD, and I am, but with Thanksgiving preparations and all, I haven't had time to finish either of them at the moment. But I AM working on them, and expect an update in the next couple of days.  
  
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All In A Day's Work  
by: Tigerwolf  
===============  
  
Okay.  
  
Joyce is at work.  
  
Buffy and Dawn are gone for the day.  
  
It's quiet. Good.   
  
Perfect oppertunity to get started on my novel.  
  
Now. Checklist. Printer: On. Computer tower: On. Speakers: On. Monitor: Not on. So I turn it on. Let's do that again. Monitor: On. Now... how did Joyce say to do this? Okay. Click on my name... where's the clicker? Oh. Mouse. It's called a mouse, ya git. Okay. Click on my name. Good.  
  
Bloody hell. Now what?  
  
Oh. Start. That seems like a good place to.. What's that? "Multipass Status Monitor"? But the monitor's on! I'm looking at... Oh. Multipass. That's the printer. Okay. So this little thing monitors the status of the printer. I can figure this out.  
  
I have no clue why Joyce wanted me to wait till she got home to turn the bloody computer on. This is easy. Just...   
  
Where'd the status monitor go?!  
  
Oh crap! If I got.. wait.. there it is. Down in the blue bar thing at the bottom of the screen. Good. Whew. Thought I'd annihalated one of the programs. Joyce would kill me for that.  
  
Now. Down to business.  
  
Start. Click on start.   
  
Whoa! "My Documents"? "My Pictures"? What are all these things? "Control Panel". Maybe that's where I go to find out how to use this bloody thing. Click on control panel.  
  
Heh. I'm gettin' pretty good at this clicker thing.  
  
Huh. This isn't right. "Appearance and Themes", "Add Or Remove Programs". I avoid that one studiously. The entire Summers family would kill me. Slowly. If I so much as touched one of Bit's and Buffy's games, or one of Joyce's accounting programs. "Appearance and Themes", though. That looks interesting. I click on it.  
  
Change desktop background, change screensaver. Hmm. Well... Couldn't hurt to look, now could it? I click on Change Desktop Background.  
  
How it's gonna change the desk it's sittin' on, I have no clue.  
  
Oh! Not change the DESK. It makes the picture on the screen different! Oooh. A tiger. And bubbles. Looks almost like a fish tank. I wonder if Joyce would let me get a fish tank. It'd give me something to watch when I'm here all alone durin' the day...  
  
And I'm getting sidetracked. I'm never gonna get this novel going if I keep allowing this bloody thing to distract me.  
  
Okay. I like the tiger, though. So I click on it. I can always change it later. Now that I know how.  
  
Now. How do I get out of this?  
  
Okay. Don't panic. There's got to be a way to get back to the.. What did it call it? Desktop thingy.   
  
Think, Spike. Think. That thing down there in the blue bar says "Appearance and Themes". That probably means that it's attached to what you're looking at. So, move the little arrow down and click-  
  
Where'd it go?!  
  
Okay. Wait... I think it got sucked into that little bar down there. So if I click again...  
  
Ah. There it is.  
  
Once, gone. Twice, back. Interesting. And kind of fun, too.  
  
But I want it gone for good, now. So how do I do that? That red X up at the top looks promising. I cross my fingers and click it.  
  
Okay... It's gone... And I can only hope it went back were it came from. This houseful of women gets sore at me for leavin' the toilet seat up. I'd hate to think what they'd do if I misplaced the Appearances And Themes on the computer.  
  
Back to the main problem, though. How do you use this thing to write?  
  
Ooh. The tiger looks even better on the full screen.  
  
Focus, Spike. Come on. Okay. Try again. Start. Now I know that "Control Panel" won't help, I need to find something else. All Programs. Okay. How many can there be?  
  
WHOA!  
  
Okay. Bad idea... how do I make this go away? There's no X! And nothing down in the... oh. Wait. It left on it's own. But what was that thing that looked like a notebook, just before it left?  
  
I click on Start again, then All Programs, being careful not to be overwhelmed by the sheer VOLUME of things that are in this bloody contraption. Okay. "Wordpad". That looks promising. I click on it with the vast hope that I'm not destroying anything.  
  
A large, blank, white screen.  
  
I cock my head at it. Well.. If it's blank... wait. It's not blank. There's a little... blinky thing at the top. I lean forward to try and see clearly, and my hand accidentally touches the keyboard.  
  
"scloe" appears on the screen. Oh! The blinky thing tells me where I'm typing!   
  
I resist the odd urge to leap up and dance around the room. I've found it! The place where you can write on the computer! I'm excited, and a little nervous, cause now I have a line of nonsense at the top of the 'page'. Well, that just won't do.  
  
It takes a moment for me to locate the 'backspace' key on the keyboard, but once I do, the nonsense is gone relatively quickly. Good. Now I can work.  
  
Wait a minute, though. What're all these things at the top of the screen? Binoculars? A printer, that one's self explainatory. But... file, edit... what? Okay. Maybe I don't need those. But what's the artist's pallet doing there? Curious, I click on it.  
  
I'm really starting to love that mousey thing.  
  
Oooh! I can type in colors! Blue! Red! Purple! Teal! Eh, forget teal. Blue. Navy blue. I like that. It's the color of one of the shirts Joyce gave me for Christmas last year. Not the one I'm wearing at the moment, but still.  
  
Okay. I can type in Navy Blue. And I'm ready to work. Now. Gonna work now.  
  
What are these?  
  
B. I. U.? Initials? Big Idiotic Useless stuff? Boring Ideas Uplift?   
  
I've got to stop thinking of what they could... Why did I click on the B?  
  
And why is all my typing suddenly bold?  
  
Wait a minute. Bold. *B*old. Oh! So what's I and U?  
  
Italics and Underline! Hey, this is really interesting.  
  
But not very condusive to work. And I have to work. That's the whole reason I turned this bloody thing on in the first place. But...  
  
There were some interesting things in that Start thing.  
  
Maybe work can wait a bit longer.  
  
I click on the little thing down in the blue bar, and make the blank screen hide down there. Heh. I like this. Now. Start.  
  
Oooh. Games. Solitaire! Hearts! PINBALL!!!  
  
Yes. Work can definitely wait. After all, how long can it take to try out these things, anyway? I have the time. Joyce isn't going to be home for hours... wait a minute. Clock.  
  
I've been doing this for SIX HOURS!!!??  
  
"Spike!? I'm home! Spike?"  
  
And now I'm in trouble.  
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Author's Notes 2: I dedicate this to my Mom, who, like Spike in this fic, is always in need of help with the computer. *chuckles* In a way, she was the inspiration, but I don't want to embarrass her by giving the story that I'm thinking of here. Review, if you would. Keeps the insomnia at bay.  
  
-Tiger 


End file.
